Reading Lips
Underestimating Mom

An experiment: Could Mom read lips?

My friend Ake was my age (six or so at this time) and lived with his parents and two older sisters, Inger and Karin, across the third-floor landing from us. One spring afternoon finds us discussing lip reading. Though I’m not sure what possible experience we based this on, the consensus we arrived at was that it was a very hard thing to do and that you had to have special training or you had to be amazingly gifted in order to read lips.

Yes, I swallowed this conviction hook, line and sinker and so felt pretty safe in proposing an experiment with Mom that would prove our conclusion.

You wouldn’t dare, said Ake, obviously daring me to.

Would too, I said.

That I’d like to see, he said.

Wait here, I said.

This is the experiment I proposed:

I would ask Mom to watch my lips, very carefully. Not being trained in the subtle art of lip-reading, there was no way she would know what I silently spoke.

Curious, she would agree.

I would ask her to look closely.

She would look closely.

Then I would quietly mouth, “You’re a stupid devil bitch.”

You’re really gonna say that? said Ake. Would you really dare? he dared.

Sure, I said, as sure as anything that both my feet were on safe and solid ground.

Mom’s uncomprehending expression would then confirm what I, as well as Ake, suspected: since she was not specially trained nor amazingly gifted at reading lips, she’d have no clue what I said.

You wouldn’t, said Ake.

Would, said I, and I climbed the stairs up to the third floor (no elevators in this building) and strode into out little apartment. “Mom!”

“What?”

“Where are you?”

“Here.” From the bedroom.

Okay, here we go.

“You don’t know how to read lips, do you?” I asked, just to confirm safety of ground.

“Not that I know,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, no reason. You up for an experiment?”

Curious (just like I foresaw) she wondered what kind of experiment.

“To test your lip-reading skills,” I said.

“Well, sure,” she agreed.

Okay, here we go. I decided to make it easy for her, so I’d pronounce my silent sentence slowly, mouthing it clearly; not to make thing impossibly hard for the poor woman.

Mom, curiosity personified by now, stood a couple of feet from me, looking down at me looking up at her.

Okay, here we go. Silently I mouthed the test phrase.

I’d say my burning cheek was smarting for a good ten minutes after that.

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